PANAJI, India — India will have to wait for its first Playboy bunnies.

After a month of heated debate, the government in the tourist hot spot of Goa has refused permission for promoters to open the country’s first Playboy Club at a 22,000-square-foot open-air property on Candolim beach.

Women’s groups and conservative politicians had attacked the proposed club, with Michael Lobo, a legislator from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, calling the idea “tantamount to promoting prostitution.”

In the end, the government barred the club — on technical grounds — from opening in one of India’s most famous party locations. Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar told the state assembly this week that licenses to run so-called beach shacks can’t be granted to companies, only individuals.

“We cannot give them a license to operate a beach shack,” Parrikar said.

PB Lifestyle, a company in Mumbai, announced last year that it had obtained an exclusive license to open Playboy clubs, hotels, bars and cafes; and sell Playboy-branded merchandise in India. It planned to start with a club in Goa.

A company executive said last year that he was working to recast Playboy as an aspirational lifestyle brand that wouldn’t spark a backlash in the conservative country, distancing itself from nudity and toning down the busty bunny costume.

The decision doesn’t bar the opening of a conventional Playboy Club in the state — just the beach shack. But Lobo has called on the government to prevent Playboy from operating in any form in Goa.“It is not just a question of permitting Playboy in Candolim,” Lobo said. “It should be banned across Goa because Goa should be veered away from international chains which promote vulgarity.”

Agnelo Fernandes, who owns the property on which the club would have been located, disagreed: “Our bunny costumes . . . were more sober than the ones worn by the cheerleaders at the IPL (Indian Premier League),” a cricket league.